I'm responding to a digest here which makes quoting from messages a
little fiddly, so forgive a lack of quotes, names, etc. There's not
too much on teaching either I'm afraid.
I have been interested in questions of creation and evolution for some
years and have done some reading around the topic and it is fair to say
that for most people who choose to believe in biblical creation it is a
matter of faith. Personally I cannot see any of the attempts to match
the two theories has any validity. They are contradictory.
The idea of a huge gap between day one and day two is a textual and
theological nonsense and strikes me as a rather desperate last ditch
attempt to preserve the literalness of the Genesis 1. Leaving aside the
complete lack of suggestion that such a gap exists in the text itself it
remains difficult to relate the suggestion that death did not exist
beforehand and that the sun etc were not created until late.
The same problem applies to the each day as an age theory in which the
fact that there was light before the sun is slightly problematic.
The ideal age theory, in some respects, does have something going for
it. It was commonly proposed at one stage. The big question people
used to ask to summarise it was "did Adam have a belly button?" The
idea is that for Adam to be a perfectly formed man he must have a belly
button, yet that would suggest that he grew in a womb thus not only
giving a false idea of the date of creation from his own apparent age on
day 6 but from the fact that he looked as though he had an adult
mother. By analogy this idea can then be applied to the earth as a
whole. My father, who was an astronomer who at one stage identified the
most distant known object in the universe - before somebody else found a
more distant one - pointed out that for the stars to be seen from earth
at creation a continuous stream of light must have been created from the
star to the earth. Given the speed of light this naturally gives a very
ancient apparent age to the universe. (No he did not subscribe to
creation.) As I hope you can see none of this allows for the accusation
of God playing a joke, it is rather (to some extent) the inevitable
result of creation. However it is hard to see how presence of fossils
etc can fit in with this idea as they do not seem inevitable in quite
the same way.
My own view is that if you choose to believe the Bible account you
should take it as is. Creation in 6 days by the miraculous work of
God. Given the believe in a miracle working God this is not an absurd
position in itself and is, in my view, the only intellectually honest
position. Incidentally this also means accepting Genesis 1-12 (the
story of the tower of babel) which does include a substantial worldwide
flood catastrophe.
I think that the point about people should be finding evidence for the
case rather than just rubbishing evolution is a fair one well made. I
suspect though that the case is actually being made, but not being read
by people outside the creationist circles. Of course the evidence will
be based on an entirely different set of underlying assumptions and will
therefore sound very alien to ears used only to the scientific
orthodoxy. I also believe it is fair for the scientific orthodox to
point out possible problems with the creationist viewpoint, for example
where a case is built on a genuine misunderstanding of some principle,
and for the creationist to point out possible problems with scientific
orthodoxy.
My own view - possibly controversial in both camps - is that there are
reasonable people on both sides of the fence. It is patently absurd to
suggest, as some do, that only a fool could accept the evidence for
evolution. It is clear that the evidence that is there can be
interpreted that way and is by the majority of people. However I'm not
prepared to say that only fools hold the alternate position and
therefore suggest that it is not unreasonable for the evidence to be
interpreted the other way, given the radically different starting point.
As to general psychology I think that there are examples here of in and
out groups of classic conformity (on both sides) and of social norms to
name but a few. If you could find a creation scientist who was willing
to talk on the pressures he or she experienced it might make a dramatic
example of some of this, while the passion of Richard Dawkins against
creationist thinking (and christianity in general) might be examined in
these terms too.
Cheers
David
--
David L Gent
South Birmingham College
Cole Bank Road
Hall Green
Birmingham
B28 8ES
UK
Telephone: +44 (0)121 694 5030
Facsimile: +44 (0)121 694 5007
Electronic Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
